''We have to fight to a safe haven - but they are all under attack"

"We'll probably be OK! I'll email when I'm safe."
The last words, via e-mail, of a British security guard who died protecting a group of British engineers in Iraq, according to the Guardian Unlimited. Mike Bloss was an ex-paratrooper and a Welshman. "He managed to keep the assailants at bay long enough to enable the contractors he was protecting to escape. But he was killed in a gun battle - and with him a little more of what optimism is left in Iraq."